Russia Today affiliate ordered by US government to register as 'foreign agent' under anti-propaganda laws

Kremlin-backed broadcaster RT reports US Justice Department move and accuses America of 'burying freedom of speech'

When Vladimir Putin was interviewed in RT's Moscow studio in 2013, he insisted the network was 'funded by the government' but 'absolutely independent' editorially (Reuters)

RT, the Kremlin-backed TV network formerly known as Russia Today, has revealed that one of its American affiliates has been ordered by the US government to register as a “foreign agent” under anti-propaganda laws.

In an angry online story condemning the move, RT said the US Justice Department had sent a letter ordering the company that supplies all services for the RT America channel to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

Introduced in 1938 to counter pro-Nazi German propaganda agents in pre-war America, FARA’s stated aim is to: “ensure the US government and people are informed of the source of information (propaganda) and the identity of persons attempting to influence public opinion, policy, and laws.”

The US Justice Department has yet to comment publicly, but any move against RT would be all the more significant because there is an exemption in FARA for news organisations, and foreign media outlets have rarely had to register under the law.

RT’s report of the action against what it called “the company that supplies all services for RT America channel, including TV production and operations in the US” also came on the same day that Yahoo News said the FBI was investigating whether the Russian news agency Sputnik should register as a “foreign agent” too.

RT and Sputnik are both operated by companies funded by the Russian government and both were named in the US intelligence report that in January accused Vladimir Putin of ordering a campaign to influence the US Presidential election.

As well as hacking, the report said, the Russian campaign involved “outlets targeting global audiences, such as RT and Sputnik, and a network of quasi-government trolls, serving as a platform for Kremlin messaging.

“State-owned Russian media made increasingly favourable comments about [Donald] Trump while consistently offering negative coverage of [Hillary] Clinton.

“RT and Sputnik consistently cast Trump as the target of unfair coverage from traditional US media outlets that they claimed were subservient to a corrupt political establishment.”

After the US intelligence report was published, two Congressmen and a Senator proposed a bipartisan Foreign Agents Registration Modernisation and Enforcement Act to “close the Russia Today loophole”, and counter “foreign propaganda dressed up as a legitimate news outlet”.

In May former FBI director Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel to investigate possible links between Mr Trump’s election campaign and Russia, and to look into alleged Russian meddling in the election more generally.

RT, founded in 2005 and broadcasting in Russian and in English in countries including the US, has repeatedly stated it is completely editorially independent in a similar manner to UK ‘state broadcaster’ the BBC.

The alleged demand that the US affiliate register as a foreign agent prompted a stinging rebuke from RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan who issued a statement, published on the network’s website, in which she said: “The war the US establishment wages with our journalists is dedicated to all the starry-eyed idealists who still believe in freedom of speech. Those who invented it, [freedom of speech] have buried it."

In what some have suggested might have been a veiled threat, Ms Simonyan also condemned the proposed Foreign Agents Registration Modernisation and Enforcement Act.

She said: “I wonder how US media outlets, which have no problems while working in Moscow, and that are not required to register as foreign agents, will treat this initiative.”

RT also quoted Mindia Gavasheli, editor-in-chief of Sputnik’s Washington bureau, as dismissing the investigation into the news agency with the comment: “That an investigation is being conducted against us is not surprising, since the atmosphere of hysteria in relation to everything that belongs to Russia has been created in the country, and everything with the word ‘Russian’ is seen through the prism of spy mania.

“We are journalists, and mostly Americans work here. We believe that any assumption that we are engaged in anything other than journalism is an absolute lie and fabrication.”

In 2013 Vladimir Putin insisted that RT was both “absolutely independent” and created “to break the Anglo-Saxon monopoly on the global information streams”.

When asked about RT, by Ms Simonyan, during an interview broadcast live on RT, the Russian president said: “When we designed this project back in 2005 we intended introducing … a player that wouldn’t just provide an unbiased coverage of the events in Russia but also try to break the Anglo-Saxon monopoly on the global information streams.

“I’d like to emphasize something of the key importance. We never expected this to be a news agency or a channel which would defend the position of the Russian political line. We wanted to bring an absolutely independent news channel to the news arena.”

“Certainly,” he added, “The channel is funded by the government, so it cannot help but reflect the Russian government’s official position on the events in our country and in the rest of the world one way or another.

“But I’d like to underline again that we never intended this channel, RT, as any kind of apologetics for the Russian political line, whether domestic or foreign.